They attended lots of games, purchased jerseys and stuffed Grizz mascot toys and Kat cheered extra loudly every time her favourite player Bryant Big Country Reeves scored or blocked a shot.

Director Ka Jayma’s quest to find former NBA centre Bryant Big Country Reeves helped her to answer a few questions about herself and her relationship to basketball. Photo: Mike DinsmoreMike Dinsmore /
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When she wasn’t focused on her favourite team’s game she was working on her own. Hours were spent dribbling and shooting. She talked about basketball non-stop and when she wasn’t talking about the game she was dreaming about playing in the WNBA.

Sadly, as a freshman at UBC the dream ended when she failed to make the final cut for the women’s varsity basketball team.

Time for her Plan B — if she couldn’t play basketball she was going to make a movie about a basketball player.

A 2011 graduate of the UBC film school Jayme had for a decade been carrying around an idea for a film like an extra pair of gym socks. What happened to her hero Big Country?

It’s that question she has answered in the utterly charming 44-minute documentary Finding Big Country. The award-winning film opens at the Vancity Theatre on Dec. 7 and Jayme and producer Michael Grand will be on hand for Q&A sessions after the Dec. 7 & 8 showings.

Jayme’s film idea became a reality in 2014 when she realized no one had talked to the former Grizzlies centre and Oklahoma State star since injuries cut his career short and he left the league with no fanfare — a long way from how he entered the league six years earlier.

Back in 1995 the expansion Grizzlies picked Reeves as their first draft choice. He was sixth overall. The first season the seven-foot centre put up decent rookie numbers averaging just over 13 points a game. His second season he averaged 16.2 points a game and that was rewarded with a six-year, $60 million contract. You could hear the gasp around the league when that baby was inked.

He had a strong third season but then weight gain and injuries lead to big problems for Big Country.

The team never made the playoffs and the fans focused on the largest target and turned on the big guy with the great hands.

“What hurt most wasn’t all the losing but that so many fans blamed Big Country,” Jayme says in the film.

By the time the team was sold and re-located to Memphis for the 2001-2002 season Reeves was suffering from major injuries. He played only two pre-season games before he was sidelined. Then poof, all seven feet of him disappeared.

Reporters, former NBA teammates, coaches and even the Grizz didn’t know what happened to Big Country after basketball.

Jayme was faced with a big challenge but she felt she might have an advantage in the capture of Big Country.

“I told them I was a childhood fan and that’s what I lead with when I approached all his family friends and teammates and people he knew,” said Jayme, now 30.

Having confirmed that Reeves was on a ranch near his hometown of Gans, Okla. she and cameraman Mike Dinsmore and producer Michael Grand packed up their gear and headed south to the town of just over 300 people.

“I went there on a whim. I didn’t know whether or not he would speak to me but it was his family and friends who got word to him that there was this girl who was calling everyone and ‘we like her, we trust her, we think you should do this,’” said Jayme.

So with Jayme vouched for by people he trusted, Reeves went ahead and talked to her on the phone and set up a meeting at his cattle-breeding ranch.

“Even now I still can’t believe it actually happened and the access I was given,” said Jayme.

The access was a fully guided tour of the property and the house where she was given free rein to a large trophy and memorabilia room.

But here’s where the film sets things straight. Reeves says with a shrug of his big shoulders he hasn’t been in hiding. He’s just been doing the father of four and rancher thing. No big deal. He just had to pivot.

“I think I learned a lot about myself in the process of making this film,” said Jayme. “I learned so much just talking to him about my journey in basketball and the similarities in our stories. I learned he just like me had another passion, which was ranching. He always had that as a kid. I could relate to that because I too had two passions going at the same time which were film and basketball,” said Jayme, adding that she was the kid in high school that always had a camera in her hand.

Watching the movie and talking to Jayme its feels like she has finally benched the disappointment of her basketball career and figured out her biggest scoring threat is her ability to tell a story through the lens of a camera.

“I turned my biggest failure into my proudest moment and that’s what I wanted to do with the story of Bryant and the Grizzlies. We only remember them as failures but there’s so much more heart there,” said Jayme. “If I wouldn’t have got cut I wouldn’t have pursued film and I wouldn’t have found Big Country.”

And she wouldn’t have got to play ball with him.

As they walk into the court he has on his ranch he tells Jayme he hasn’t played in seven or eight years.

Every summer there are kids basketball camps, but on this day the tree-tall Big Country laced up his shoes and faced off against the five-foot Jayme in a game of one-on-one and a half.

A strong three-point shooter Jayme drained a few from outside but what she really wanted was to score on a drive.

“I really wanted to get a lay-up in,” said Jayme. “But I don’t think he was going to let me go home and brag about beating Big Country, so he blocked every lay-up.”

So even all these year’s later the big centre is still competitive and for that matter so is the little point guard.

“There was one shot that still haunts me that’s when I fake him out and I miss. That was one time I got past him,” said Jayme. “But at the same time I’m glad I didn’t beat my childhood hero. He is still regarded super highly in my head.”

Jayme’s love of the game and the Grizzles goes on as she is currently in development for a feature length documentary about the team.